The Beekeeper's Apprentice - Laurie R. King [129]
Watson wrote too, long tentative letters, mostly about Holmes’ health and mind. He came to see me once in Oxford. I took him for a long walk so I might not have to sit and face him, and the cold and my coolness sent him limping away with his bodyguard.
It was a long, bitter winter after the warmth of Palestine. I read my Hebrew Bible, and I thought about Holofernes and the road to Jerusalem.
In early March I received a telegram from Holmes, his preferred method of communication. It said simply:
are you coming down
between terms query
holmes
I read it openly at Mr. Thomas’s busy front desk and allowed a short twist of irritation to show on my face before I turned to go up-stairs. The next day I sent him a return question.
should i query
russell
The following day his response lay n my pigeonhole.
please do mrs hudson
would also be glad
holmes
Mine in return, sent two days later, confirmed that I would come. The next free day I went to London to see the executors of my par-ents’ will, to lay before them the proposal that I be given sufficient advance from my inheritance, now less than two years away, to pur-chase a motorcar. The partner who handled my parents’ estate hemmed and hawed and made several private telephone calls, and to no great surprise of mine he approved. I went down the next day to the Morris Oxford garage and paid for it, as well as arranging lessons. I was soon mobile.
It was at this time, two weeks before the end of term, that I first be-came aware that I was being watched. I was highly preoccupied, and often read a book while walking, so it is possible that they had been present before and I hadn’t noticed them. The first time I saw the man, I was outside my lodgings and realised suddenly that I had for-gotten a book. I doubled back quickly to get it, and out of the corner of my eye noticed a man stoop down suddenly to tie his shoe. It wasn’t until I had my key in the door that it hit me: He had been wearing laceless shoes. After that I was more attentive, and found that a woman and another man alternated with the first. All were reasonably good at disguises, particularly the woman, and I should certainly not have been able to pick out the nun with no scuffs on her toes or the man walking the bulldog as being the same person had I not spent time under Holmes’ tutelage.
I had only one problem. If I had truly cut myself off from Holmes, I would not hide my annoyance at being spied on. However, I hesi-tated to bring the thing into the open before consulting him. This was the first time anyone had come sniffing around the bait at my end, and I was loath to frighten them off. Would the adversary believe that I was not seeing them? They were far from obvious, but still—
I decided to continue as before, and became even more absent-minded until one day as I had my Greek Testament in front of my nose, I walked into a lightpost on the High Street. I found myself sit-ting stupefied on the ground while people exclaimed over the blood on my face and a young woman held out my shattered spectacles. I came home from the surgery with a large plaster on my forehead, and I had to wear my spare spectacles for two days while the others were repaired. As I would probably not have recognised Mycroft Holmes himself standing in front of me with the old ones on, it settled tem-porarily the problem of whether or not I ought to notice my followers. The doctor who stitched me up suggested mildly that I keep my mind off aorist passive verbs while I was walking, and I had to agree. As an actress I was a good changeling.
When my new glasses came I found my tail still behind me. I de-cided that I would drive to Sussex rather than take the train, and made prior—public—arrangements with the garage